Riverbend is Back
Riverbend weighs in on the condition of Iraq and Saddam's impending execution.
I disagree with her about Jalal Talabani (the old-time Kurdish politician who is now Iraq's president), who has opposed the death penalty all his political life, and I think that he genuinely won't sign the death decree for reasons of principle.
I also don't agree that the Bush administration was deliberately trying to break up Iraq. It wants it whole (international corporations like to sign their contracts just once, thank you). It is just that its plan, of putting the Shiites and Kurds in power and making the Sunni Arabs subordinate to them, was never practical and did have the effect of pushing the country toward a break-up.
As always, her comments are canny and give a good sense of what educated, secular Sunni Arabs in Iraq are thinking. It isn't a position you'd hear in an interview in US corporate media.
posted by Juan Cole @ 12/29/2006 08:54:00 AM
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I'd rank US preferences as follows:
1 - Unified Iraq, nominally democratic but where the US Ambassador can veto Iraqi policy (Afghanistan immediately after the installation of Karzai)
2 - Unified Iraq, not democratic where the US Ambassador can veto policy (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan)
3 - Totally destroyed Iraq that poses no threat to Israel or pro-US dictatorships
4 - Unified Iraq, democratic or not, that opposes the US
So while the US writes poems about how much it wants to see 1 or 2, in real life it had to choose between 3 and 4 and it chooses 3 very consistently through its actions.
I doubt the US is seriously working to partition Iraq, especially if that means the Kurds declaring their independence which will more then likely drag the Turks into this mess. And the last thing the US would want is for the Turks, Syrians and the Iranians to be cooperating militarily against a "Kurdish threat".
Though there clearly are elements working to destroy Iraq as a nation and they might exist as US lobby groups but they surely do exist in the Kurdish and Shia populations. But I would not expect this to be official administration policy.
As for Eidul Adha (Festival of Sacrifice) which began today. The Sadrists have called for Saddam to be executed during the Eid. Though I believe it would be a stupid idea considering it is a festival of the story of Ibrahim being ordered to slaughter his son Ishmael (Muslims believe it was Ishmael that was to be slaughtered at the Kaabah).
For Saddam to be executed now would work as a propaganda tool for the Baathists.
Number of comments on different topics relating to this post:
1. Killing Saddam: It means nothing to the US national interests unless we learn how Saddam was propped up and try and watch out for the same propping techniques that are now being used vis a vis warlords/allies across Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iraq and, now, Ethiopian-occupied Somalia.
2. Breaking Iraq: It only works in favor of those, like Israel and Saudi Arabia, who are threatened by a united Iraq that is loyal to Iran and Syria. US interests in Iraq will vanish once the troops leave primarily because no Iraqi government will honor the long term contracts signed under the CPA or Allawi.
3. Kurdistan: When the US troops withdraw, not if but when as everyone here knows, they will almost certainly leave a large contingent permanently in Kurdistan. The Kurds may have a state, but it will be a US protectorate with very little foreign policy powers. The US will almost certainly push to ‘disarm’ the Peshmerga and re-employ them as a Kurdish national army run by Kurdish generals under US command and control.
4. Eid: Given the slaughter, persecution and starvation across the Arab and Muslim world, be it in Gaza, Afghanistan or Iraq, there will be little reason for Muslims to rejoice even if Saddam is dropped from the gallows. Those Shia and Kurds who rejoice Saddam's death know very well that the insurgency and sectarian violence they are facing will make this celebration short-lived.
Death and destruction will remain the major story before and after this Eid.
"It is just that [the] plan, of putting the Shiites and Kurds in power and making the Sunni Arabs subordinate to them, was never practical and did have the effect of pushing the country toward a break-up."
Like Ulster in Ireland, Sunnistan in neo-Iraq may look a little smaller on the map than quite seems to warrant . . . , but nevertheless, it's much more important than any invasive one-subject-one-vote claptrapmonger can ever grasp.
There are, after all the country's Natural Rulers and the country's naturally-ruleds. You can pretend that every Natural Ruler shouldn't get ten or a hundred votes to every one for the naturally-ruleds, but you can't really brazen any "Iraq" out of that plan, now can you? Of course not! You want a United Iraq, you don't want heretics and hillbillies empowered, you want a Sunni Ascendancy just like always and forever before. Of course. What else could you possibly want that would be "practical"?
Sure, of course, "secularist" would be even better than Sunni, but you always gotta work with what you got, begorrah!
(One begs pardon of God.)
I'd like to revise what I wrote earlier.
The US would prefer a unified Iraq that is subject to US influence/control, but Iran, Syria, private Saudi parties, and especially Iraq's Shiites and Iraq's Sunnis have vetoed that. The part about US influence/control cannot happen and it is unclear to what degree US policymakers have admitted it to themselves.
So now, every step the US takes to prevent my earlier option 4, an Iraq that is hostile to the US, Israel and the pro-US dictatorships necessarily makes option 3 more likely, the chaotic and destructive dissolution of the country. In a subtle way the US can claim it is not doing it on purpose, but it is actively preventing the only plausible alternative.
I also have to add that Salem92000 makes a very good point that when the colonialists where dividing and conquering, breaking political territories into more manageable sizes, they never admitted that is what they were doing. Maybe also in subtle ways they were doing it in ways that they could claim were not deliberate.
Professor Cole,
You are overlooking Israeli Oded Yinon's 'divide and conquer' strategy which Dr. Stephen Sniegoski addresses in his 'Israeli Origins of Bush II's War' article via the following URL:
Israeli Origins of Bush II's War
Please take a read of what esteemed US intelligence author/writer James Bamford wrote about the 'A Clean Break'/war for Israel agenda of JINSA/PNAC (Israel first) Neocons Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser (who is pushing regime change for Iran next in Dick Cheney's office) from pages 261-269/321 of his 'A Pretext for War' book as the paperback version of 'A Pretext for War' includes an additional section at the end about the AIPAC espionage case which the Israel first US press/media isn't covering either for the most part - Perle, Feith and Wurmser were never interested in democracy for Iraq and wanted a pro-Israel puppet dictator in Chalabi to replace Saddam and would settle with Oded Yinon's 'divide and conquer' plan now for sure as the preferred exit for Iraq as they set their sights on Iran next in accordance with the rest of their 'A Clean Break' agenda:
'A Clean Break' (from James Bamford's 'A Pretext for War' book)
I think Arnold Evans has it right about the U.S. government's preference, and also, unfortunately, the futility of Options 1 & 2.
I wonder if there is also an Option 2a or 3a, in which Iraq is broken but not totally destroyed, and in which only two of its three parts are strongly anti-U.S.
TG
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